English

Bits Through Bufferless Queues

Information Theory 2018-03-06 v1 math.IT

Abstract

This paper investigates the capacity of a channel in which information is conveyed by the timing of consecutive packets passing through a queue with independent and identically distributed service times. Such timing channels are commonly studied under the assumption of a work-conserving queue. In contrast, this paper studies the case of a bufferless queue that drops arriving packets while a packet is in service. Under this bufferless model, the paper provides upper bounds on the capacity of timing channels and establishes achievable rates for the case of bufferless M/M/1 and M/G/1 queues. In particular, it is shown that a bufferless M/M/1 queue at worst suffers less than 10% reduction in capacity when compared to an M/M/1 work-conserving queue.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1401.3580,
  title  = {Bits Through Bufferless Queues},
  author = {Mehrnaz Tavan and Roy D. Yates and Waheed U. Bajwa},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1401.3580},
  year   = {2018}
}

Comments

8 pages, 3 figures, accepted in 51st Annual Allerton Conference on Communication, Control, and Computing, University of Illinois, Monticello, Illinois, Oct 2-4, 2013

R2 v1 2026-06-22T02:46:06.775Z